Fault Lines
by IllustratedGirl
Summary: Harvey's trying to teach Mike something. Mike's trying to use it against him. Things get a little twisted. Fair warning? This story might be totally insane. It might not make any sense. I actually cannot tell anymore. It probably jumps from jokes to insane fights to sex and then back around to humor. Then, drunk nights tend to do that.


If only Suits were mine. It's not.

_Author's Note: I liked this when I wrote it. I still kind of do. Shit takes a weird turn though. I wanted it to be a little less light, but I do love a good wise crack. There's a fair bit of foul language, and a little bit of sex. And also some drinking. Maybe some violence. I don't know if I'd call it "cracky" exactly, but it's definitely not all there. In a mental sense. Now that I say that, I'm realizing that maybe it doesn't make any sense at all, and it is totally cracky. Somebody tell me. I'd love to know if it's as bad as I'm thinking now. This is what happens when I get inspired by music and I lose my train of thought halfway through writing something._

_Whaaaaat. It's Friday. Don't listen to me._

* * *

Mike was on time. "On time" in the sense that he was half an hour early, and if he'd been on time, he would've been late. As the saying goes, anyway.

Still, Harvey knew something was up. Unless Mike was hitting the morning from the back, having stayed up all night at the office, he was never early. He wondered vaguely if it was Mike's birthday, and then discarded the thought. There was a tickling memory of a cake from several months ago.

The way Mike was practically hopping around the office made Harvey uncomfortable. The kid was even nice to Louis, for Christ's sake. There was no reason for it.

"Where ya goin?" Mike was bouncing on the balls of his feet as he tailed Harvey towards the elevator.

"I have a lunch meeting," Harvey replied dryly, his eyebrow cocking of its own accord.

"Can I come?" Mike grinned up at him, and Harvey considered for a moment.

"No," he answered finally as the elevator doors whooshed open, "I left some files on your desk while you were cavorting. I want you to be able to converse intelligently about them by the time I get back."

Harvey stuffed his phone into his pocket and stepped into the elevator.

"You're making me work through lunch?" Mike sounded more deflated than he should've, his lower lip hanging out slightly.

"It's character building," Harvey knew it was cliché, but he grinned roguishly anyway before the closing doors cut Mike from his view.

Mike slouched back to his desk and threw himself into his chair. He stared petulantly at the slim stack of files on his desk for a moment before reaching forward and flipping the top one open.

As he exited the town car, Harvey considered grabbing Mike a hot dog. Knowing his associate as he did, Harvey was well aware Mike would take "working through lunch" completely literally.

Then he pictured himself hand delivering an associate, any associate, lunch, and scoffed the idea away. Instead he swept into the building, strolling in and then out of the elevator to his office.

He saw Mike waiting for him in his office and looked curiously at Donna. She shrugged.

"He told me you wanted to talk to him after lunch," she answered his unasked question and Harvey sighed. He was actually going to have to start using the word "figuratively."

"So, Rookie, what have we learned?" Harvey knew the "royal we" irritated Mike to no end.

"I learned, you already knew," Mike retorted as Harvey settled himself behind his desk. Harvey nodded exasperatedly and motioned for Mike to continue.

"Steadman did some naughty things, and then fired a few people who disagreed with his behavior. Luckily, we don't represent Steadman, we represent NewLife. Steadman gets dishonorably fired, loses his career, and the women he harassed get tidy settlements that won't make national news. We'll call it a win," Mike rattled off, sounding bored.

"It will be a win. What next?" Harvey prompted. His eyes were focused on his laptop, but he didn't miss the dramatic roll of Mike's eyes.

"Steadman sues NewLife for wrongful termination and we stuff him like a sock monkey. Next."

Mike's tone was so dismissive Harvey would've thought it was himself speaking. Except... sock monkey? He chose to ignore it.

"Next you get started on the settlement paperwork and nondisclosure agreement. Leave yourself a loophole to make sure the women signing it will be able to testify at trial. Do you best to make it elegant," Harvey replied, knowing Mike had never done anything close to elegant in his entire life.

"Is that all?" Mike queried, and something in his tone sounded like he didn't want that to be all.

"Get to work."

* * *

It was nearly midnight, and Harvey was relaxing in his living room with a scotch when his phone went off, nearly shaking itself off the coffee table. He groaned, leaned forward, and scooped it up.

_You're an asshole._

For a moment Harvey considered how difficult it would make his life to fire Mike. He decided against it, but that didn't mean he couldn't have a little fun.

_Old news. Anything constructive to say?_

_Not if you don't already know._ Mike's cryptic reply was almost immediate.

_Oh please. You're my employee, not my boyfriend. Cut the passive aggressive bullshit and speak words that mean something._

_Are you implying that you have boyfriends?_

Harvey huffed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He'd walked right into that, of course.

_I'm implying that you're being a twat. Put the beer down and go to bed._

_Put the scotch down and buzz me up._

_No._

_Harveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee_

No "y."

Mike had definitely been drinking. And not the "one after work to relax" kind of drinking. Harvey knew it was a mistake to level a challenge, seeing as how Mike had made it to his door wasted once before, but he did it anyway.

_You're wily. You'll get up here if you really want to._

Ten minutes later there was a staccato knock on his front door. Harvey groaned audibly.

He'd asked for this.

"How did you get in here?" he asked as he swung the door open, not really sure he wanted to know.

"You know the cute blonde who lives on the fourth floor?" Mike asked, raising his brow in a way that looked sinisterly familiar.

"Yes?" Harvey replied slowly, balking at the stench of cheap tequila that rolled off Mike as he strode into the apartment.

"She used to think you were sexy, in a domineering high school principal kind of way. I helped her with her groceries. Now she thinks you're a sex addict that plays on the delicate emotions of barely legal, fatherless twinks," Mike informed him, parking himself at Harvey's breakfast bar, "Those glass bauble-y things are girly. They don't fit."

Mike nodded towards the art installation hanging by the floor-to-ceiling windows.

"When I want your opinion on interior design, I'll ask. Somehow I don't think I'll ever go in a 'pizza box chic' direction with the place, though," Harvey mused, his gaze capture by the skyline beyond the window.

"Shut up, Harvey." Mike's rejoinder was half-hearted. In fact, he sounded suddenly exhausted. Harvey glanced at him with something Mike might've recognized as concern if he hadn't been too busy making a study of the floor.

"Why are you here, Mike?" Harvey turned to face Mike again, squaring his stance and pushing his shoulders back.

"Do you know what today is, Harvey?" Mike asked, though he plainly refused to raise his eyes from the ground.

"June 23rd?" Harvey phrased it like a question, but they both knew it wasn't.

"Today," Mike heaved a sigh, "is the day you hired me."

"No," Harvey said slowly, as if Mike were stupid or hard of hearing, "Today is the day you did paperwork on the NewLife case and showed up drunk at my apartment. Again."

"You're so goddamn thick sometimes!" Mike's apathy had turned to anger, "It's the _anniversary_ of the day you hired me."

Harvey couldn't help himself. He burst out laughing. To Mike's ears it was a cold, mirthless sound.

"Our _anniversary_, Mike? I already told you, you're not my boyfriend. You're my employee. The employee/employer relationship doesn't allow for anniversaries. You want a celebration? Do something worth celebrating. You made it through your first year at Pearson-Hardman. Congratulations. That was a cake walk compared to how the next year will be. And that year will be a cake walk compared to the one after that. Are you catching my drift here, Mike?" Harvey had choked out the first part through what sounded an awful lot like giggles, but he had slipped quickly into a his serious, lecturing tone.

"Yeah, Harvey. I'm catching it. You don't care. Got it. It was stupid to think that you would," Mike groused as he slithered to his feet, "Sorry I bothered you."

"No you're not," Harvey snorted and sipped the last of his scotch.

"You're right. I'm not sorry I bothered you. I'm sorry I _bothered_ at all. I'm sorry that I thought that after a _year_, you might show some appreciation for having me around besides 'I can't fire you, I'd have to interview more idiots.'" Mike spat as he moved for the door, but Harvey blocked his path.

He grasped Mike's shoulders and very lightly slapped him across the face. More of a tap than anything, an attempt to pull Mike out of his self-pitying stupor. Mike didn't care. He was furious, seething under the strong hands on his shoulders. He could feel an impulsive, id driven decision welling up from the pit of his stomach, and he didn't try to push it down.

"Pull it together, Mike. You're in the big leagues now. You could at least pretend like you belong here," Harvey scolded, his hands still on Mike's shoulders.

One could say he was more than a little surprised when a moment later he found his cheek pressed against the cold glass of the window, one arm twisted behind his back and Mike leaning into it to make it hurt, hissing in his ear.

"Don't you _ever_ touch me like that. I'm not your punching bag, Harvey. You could ruin my career for this? For any little slipup I make? Well, I could ruin yours. Who has more to lose here, Harvey?" Mike leaned harder into his arm and Harvey struggled not to yelp.

"Michael, would you for once in your goddamn life _think_ about what you're doing? Step outside of yourself for a second and _look_ at what is happening here," Harvey growled, though he didn't squirm in Mike's grasp. The old injury to his shoulder was on fire and he could feel it shaking down into his fingers, into his chest. He had never expected Mike to take "push it 'til it hurts" so literally. He half expected that if he asked Mike to hold something for a second, it'd be on the floor exactly a second later.

All of a sudden the heat and the body behind him were gone, his arm was free. Harvey turned slowly, carefully rolling his shoulder. It whimpered in protest but he pushed it, pulling the out the knot forming in the thick muscle at the base of his neck.

"I'm _sorry_, I don't... I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Mike's face was buried in his hands and he'd retreated several feet, his posture all contrition. Harvey saw a few stray tears slip between Mike's fingers and down the back of his hand.

"You're a goddamn mess," Harvey noted without any real heat.

"I _know_," Mike almost wailed, and Harvey flinched. He'd never learned to deal with messy displays of emotion from people he wasn't ripping to shreds. Legally, of course.

"Tequila's not your drink," Harvey continued his string of obvious observations.

"What the hell is _wrong_ with me? I pinned you against a wall, for fuck's sake." Mike's voice was muffled, he still hadn't pulled his hands from his face.

"Window, technically," Harvey crossed the room and refilled his tumbler. Mike was clearly not leaving, and he clearly needed another drink to deal with it.

"I'm _sorry._"

"You said that already," Harvey pointed out dryly, and Mike wondered vaguely if Harvey was ever going to stop announcing things they both already knew.

"Harvey, what do you want from me?" Mike's head popped up, his eyes over bright with tears he'd swallowed back, "Why am I even here?"

"I haven't the faintest idea why you're here. To assault me, I suppose." Harvey buried his nose in his drink.

"You know what I'm asking you!" Mike strained out, and Harvey sighed. He'd have to be honest. He _hated_ that.

"You're here because you're brilliant. You're here because if somebody hadn't pulled you from the morass of the life you were leading you'd be in prison or dead, wasting a brain with the capacity to do almost anything, except perhaps light fires spontaneously. You're here because I can teach you something. You're here because I didn't read you as the person who'd have a drunken breakdown in my apartment over a stupid anniversary," Harvey informed him, voice clipped. It was time for Mike to go.

Mike didn't seem to realize it.

"It was stupid," he admitted.

"Yes."

"But what about you?" Mike queried and Harvey blinked at him.

"What _about_ me?"

"Why'd you feel like you had to fix me? And don't give me the 'you're were wasting your spectacular brain' speech. We both know that's not the whole story," Mike accused.

"We're not talking about me. I'm not the one that showed up at my boss' apartment drunk." It was a deflection, albeit a weak one.

"We weren't talking about you, now we are. My minor mental crisis has passed, and I seriously am sorry about the shoulder thing. It'll haunt me forever, if that makes you feel any better," Mike offered, "But we are talking about you now."

"No, we're not. Although, the fact that you'll remember me as a stoic and beyond reasonable human being in your moment of mental opaqueness in the crisp reality of live action for the rest of your life does make me feel slightly better, yes," Harvey would give him that backhanded compliment, at least.

"You're a fixer, Harvey. You'll do whatever you have to get a deal closed, you'll fix _anything._ And when fixing the law started getting boring, you decided to fix me. Why this compulsive need to make everything better? To _be_ better?" Mike would not let it go.

"It's not a compulsive need to make everything better. It's a compulsive need to make the world a little less stupid every day I have to live in it," Harvey retorted. Mike saw his opportunity and jumped on it.

"So it wasn't stupid to risk the career you've spent the last fifteen-odd years building for me?" he questioned, a conniving edge in his voice.

"No." Harvey felt suddenly off balance, defensive. Harvey wasn't defense. He was offence, through and through.

"All you had to do was say 'Oh well, not my problem,' and wave the cops through the door. _I_ wasn't your problem. You _chose_ to make me your problem. Now you've got to deal with me, and I'm asking you why you've made a career of fixing other people's problems." Mike had found his crack, and he was pushing it. Hard. "Is it because you can't fix your own?"

"I don't have any problems except you," Harvey scoffed, "And even you would cease to be one if you'd just go home and sleep it off."

"So the fact that there's exactly three people in the entire world that are willing to put up with your bullshit isn't a problem?"

"I don't see it as one, no."

"And the fact that you're an evasive motherfucker who's so shocked you let me get close enough to even _find_ your emotional buttons, let alone teach me to have the guts to push them, that you haven't thrown me bodily out of your apartment," Mike threw the words at him, hammering at the fissures he saw in Harvey's eyes.

"I don't have emotional buttons, Michael. I have one button. The 'I am going to get pissed off and destroy you' button. You're leaning on it," Harvey threatened, setting his once again empty tumbler on the breakfast bar.

"So destroy me," Mike shrugged carelessly, leveling Harvey with a cool stare, "Show me whatcha got."

Harvey opened his mouth to do just that.

"Go home, Mike," came out instead.

"No. What is it, Harvey? Your Atlas complex? Caught that two weeks in. You _like_ having the whole fucking world on your shoulders, because that's easier than trusting it to someone else. Someone who might screw it up. You can read everyone? Well, I can read you. You thrive on chaos because calm scares you. All you see when it's calm is the next storm on the horizon, and waiting for it makes you antsy. You're _scared, _Harvey. You're scared if you relax for one whole second, the world will throw the one bomb you can't diffuse at you. So instead you _surround_ yourself with bombs. Me, and multimillion dollar mergers, and goading Louis, and confronting murderous drug dealers, and hell, even your former mentor. You had to have known that guy could shatter your life from the first minute you met him, because you read everyone, right? You threw yourself in anyway, because living without the threat of imminent goddamn collapse fucking _terrifies_ you," Mike was almost ranting, stepping closer and closer to Harvey as his voice got louder and more insistent.

"I said GO HOME, Mike!" Harvey wasn't sure why he was yelling.

"And I said no!" Mike screamed right back, "I want you to admit it! Admit having to slow down even a hair isn't even in the realm of possibility for you. Admit your life is a house of cards and you _like it_ that way. You must like it, because you must know it doesn't have to be that way. Living life at a higher level doesn't mean risking everything you have every time you bet. And you bet all. The. Time."

"Fine!" Harvey's voice sounded alien to his own ears and he was shouting at the top of his lungs despite the fact that he was standing toe-to-toe with Mike, "You want me to admit it? I will. You're right. You're right about every goddamn bit of it! I _like_ the edge, Mike. I don't even feel alive without it. I rationalize stupid fucking decisions just so I can prove I was right. I jump on hand grenades, but it's not to show everybody else up, it's to show them that it can be done. I constantly challenge myself so I can constantly prove that I'm the best because if I'm not the best then what's the _fucking point_?"

Harvey felt ragged and worn out. His breathing was hitched, and the appearance of Mike's hands on his face didn't help. He jerked away automatically, but Mike held on, forcing Harvey to look him in the eye.

"Don't you feel better now?" Mike asked softly, and for a second all Harvey could see was how close their mouths were.

"No," he retorted bitterly, and Mike smiled ruefully.

"Yes, you do," Mike almost laughed it, his fingers bothering at Harvey's hairline. Harvey didn't reply, he just avoided Mike's sightline.

"S'all right though. There are worse things to be addicted to than chaos," Mike's rueful smile didn't dissipate as his fingers shifted, one hand resting on Harvey's neck as the other cradled the back of his head.

"W-what," Harvey grimaced at the stutter and changed what he was going to say, instead breathing out "Mike."

"It's better when things are messy, complicated, stupid..." Mike faltered a little, "dangerous on the inside. All the exterior has to do is shine."

Mike's fingers were tight in Harvey's hair and he knew he should pull away. He couldn't, though, instead finally closing the gap between them to kiss Mike forcefully. Harvey was almost surprised how neatly Mike fit against his chest, how comfortable his arms were tucked around the dip just above Mike's hips.

Then again, Mike was practically the embodiment of chaos. His illegal past, his dumpster apartment, his disheveled suits, his constant state of bed-head. Mike was outwardly the mess that Harvey unconsciously strived to create in his own life, now that his life was so disturbingly upper class clean.

Their lips slipped apart, but Harvey wasn't having any of it, grazing his teeth across the silky skin just below Mike's ear. Mike made a noise in the back of his throat that sent a small jolt through Harvey's chest.

His hands yanked viciously at Mike's clothes as their mouths met again, his tongue exploring the gentle curves of Mike's lips. Harvey felt only a small pang of regret as buttons popped off and overpriced fabric hit the floor. Mike was only slightly more careful with Harvey, his fingers flicking open buttons before he jerked that crisp collared shirt off. Then undershirts and belts and trousers and it was all too much clothing that neither one could shed fast enough.

Goosebumps rose on Harvey's skin as Mike trailed his fingers up Harvey's abdomen, suddenly excruciating slow.

"Mike," Harvey heard himself growl. His hands couldn't find enough of Mike's skin, from his hips to his chest and down again to the taut curve of his back. Harvey found his mouth on the shell of Mike's ear before Mike grasped his jaw again and pulled him back.

Mike's eyes were massive, pupils blown out and Harvey could feel Mike practically vibrating against him. Harvey couldn't fathom why Mike would drag it out like this.

"You're a deliberate man, Harvey. Sometimes deliberately thoughtless, sometimes deliberately stupid. Every terrible decision you make, you make on purpose. So why don't you deliberately enjoy this, instead of rushing through every friggin' second of so you can get me out of your apartment. So you can wipe your hands of it and call it problem solved," Mike whispered all of this directly into Harvey's ear. Harvey was sure the light bumps of Mike's mouth against his neck were intentional.

"You think sleeping with my associate would be me calling it problem solved?" Harvey almost laughed, "You might like calling me out, but you're a complete enabler. You live for chaos too, you just haven't learned to hide it so well." His hands hadn't stopped tracing over Mike's skin, finding freckles he'd expected and musculature he hadn't. He made a mental note to stop ragging on Mike's bike so much.

"Things are so boring, otherwise."

"Exactly my point. Jessica knows, it feels a little like we got away with it."

"So let's get away with this. Slowly."

Harvey paused, a dim thought flickering through the back of his brain as Mike's lips trailed down his chest.

"In another life, we would've made excellent criminals."

Mike was on his knees now, brushing his fingers over the sharp curves of Harvey's hips. He looked up, all cocky smiles and amusement even as his tongue tickled along Harvey's cock.

"Harvey. We _are_ criminals."


End file.
